Posts Tagged ‘secular’

Few casual liberals realize the fact that the entire economic premise underlying economic Marxism flows from a hostility toward God and toward religion.

Atheism and a spirit of hostility and hatred toward God and toward religion is at the very core of Marxism. In the words of Karl Marx:

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

What did Karl Marx mean by this?

Basically, Marx taught that the world is divided into the haves and the have-nots – which is everywhere being shouted around us today. And the have-nots were being oppressed by the haves. But rather than the people rising up in rage and seizing what Marx declared was theirs by force as Marx wanted them to, the people were instead happy in their religion, which according to Marx had been invented by the rich to keep the proletariat in bondage. Marx acknowledged that in his day, religion was the order of the world; but he determined – and in fact succeeded – in imposing a NEW world system. Since religion is nothing but an illusion, and materialism is all there actually is, the happiness that the people had in their Christianity was nothing more than a narcotic that kept them in bondage. The only “real” reality is economic reality. And therefore the solution presented by Marx was for the people to set aside their shackles of religion and rise up in a spirit of rage and take what was theirs by force. Only then could the people have actual, “material” happiness.

The eight commandment in the Holy Bible is “You shall not steal,” and the tenth commandment is, “You shall not covet.” Both ultimately flow from violation of the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Marxism – as Marx acknowledged – overthrew this system and imposed one in which the State replaced God. And where God in the Bible had commanded man NOT to covet anything that belonged to his neighbor, Marxism was in fact BASEDon coveting. “Hey, look at those damn rich people! They’ve got everything! Let’s take their stuff!” Because apart from that looking over the wall at your neighbor’s house and coveting what he had and becoming angry that he or she had things that you did not have, Marxism never gets off the ground.

The sin of Achan as described in Joshua chapter 7 (especially 7:21) follows this order: first you covet, THEN you steal. And thus economic Marxism, based on atheism and upon replacing God with the all-powerful socialist State, first ordains abolishing God, then ordains materialism and demagogues coveting, and then ultimately empowers the all-powerful government that they have erected to steal in the name of the people.

The book of Ephesians 5:5 identifies coveting with idolatry. And this idolatrous coveting is a root-sin from which all others flow. Covetousness comes from idolatry because you are taking God off the throne and replacing Him with yourself – or in the case of Marxism, with the State – in God’s place. We covet what belongs to others because we have a misplaced value system. As our desires and our pleasure are directed more and more toward more material things, we covet and begin to feel entitled to take – or allow the State to take – what others have built and worked for. And many people as a result of this system have a seething anger toward those who have more than they because their unrealistic expectations aren’t being met. God created us to find our fulfillment and our happiness in Him, but Marxism – and liberalism – says piss on that. God is an illusion, and we can take what we want from others to make ourselves happy.

“reveal this dark secret that lies at the deepest recesses of the human soul, which is our susceptibility to become slaves. It’s there. It’s ready. It can pounce at any moment and transform us into serfs.”

Rabbi Lapin points out that King Nimrod didn’t actually come out and say, “Let’s build a tower.” Rather, he said, “Let’s make bricks.” And united the people in the endeavor of making bricks. And this is important, as Lapin explains:

Bricks are really important things here. Later on in the five books of Moses, ancient Jewish wisdom highlights the fact that that an altar — an altar to God must not be built of bricks, right? It has to be built with stones.

Why? Because this tension between the bricks and stones is absolutely crucial. Bricks and stones are a biblical metaphor for the way people should be stones, and the way we are easily pulled to be bricks.

Two differences between bricks and stones.

Number one, every brick is the same as every other brick. That’s the whole point. They’re totally interchangeable. If you want to turn people to bricks, you are able to turn them into interchangeable social economic cogs that can be just plugged around society.

The second thing about bricks is they’re made by man. Stones are each unique. When we have a tradition in Western civilization that man is created the image of God, what it really means is that just as God is unique, so is every single human being is unique, just like a stone.

Don’t allow other people to turn you into bricks, retain the personality of a person for which you are created.

It’s a difference between “yes, I can,” and “yes, we can.” […]

And one way it really works is that in every epoch, there is always going to be somebody who tries to seize power. What these 11 verses — these nine verses in Chapter 11 tell us is here are the things you have to watch out for. Here are the things that a potential tyrant is going to do in order to seduce you.

Number one, he is going to have a tower. Now, a tower means reaching for the skies — appealing to everything that is great in human nature.

Now, look, any leader, whether you’re taking care of your family, whether you’re running a business, whether you’re a military leader — you know, military recruiters don’t say: Hey, come join us. The food is horrible. You’re likely to get killed and you’re going to be a horribly hot — they don’t do that. Step forward and play a role to defend your country, be all you could be. You appeal to the highest in human nature.

That’s what tyrants learn to do as well.

And we don’t need God. We don’t need stones. We don’t need anything that God created because you are great, people are great. All of this is going to be built with bricks and we’re going to make you all interchangeable. That’s why tyrants will do exactly that.

Conservative thought emphasizes that individuality of the Bible as told by the God who created us in His image. We’re not interchangeable bricks unified by an all-powerful State, we’re individual stones. But Barack Obama is firmly rooted in man as bricks. He says of small business owners, the most individualistic people of all, “You didn’t build that. Government did.” But back in this ancient time, just as they were when Karl Marx emerged onto the scene, people had been worshiping God and content in their religion. But then this King Nimrod came along. The Bible described him as a “hunter of men.” Why? Lapin explained:

Why on earth would this one man, Nimrod, be identified as a hunter? Because he hunted, not animals, he hunted people. Not to kill them, he hunted people to seduce them into becoming his subjects and to allow him to become their master.

The new idea is — and is presented as the Babel blueprint. This is not long forgotten story. This is actually something which is as relevant today as it will be tomorrow, as it was when Robespierre was conducting the French Revolution. The principle is always the same.

The two competing ways of organizing human society: One is the Abraham vision of individual independence, individual accountability, God-centric — versus the idea of centralized control.

So, Abraham gives the vision of individual independence, which always has to include economic impendence. That’s absolutely crucial. And sure enough, Abraham, first man in the Bible described as a wealthy man, a blessing, a good thing. Not a curse — a good thing.

And what is it that binds all of these interchangeable bricks that Marxism and liberalism want us to become? Mortar. And what is mortar? Lapin again:

Yes now, in Hebrew, mortar is very related — same word really as the word materialism. And you can actually even hear the similarity transfer into the English language. Mortar — M, T, R are the key consonants. Material — matter — same word essentially.

And it’s very important because the lesson from ancient Jewish wisdom here is that you can bond people and unify people with a sense of common spiritual purpose, but if you’re going to eliminate the spiritual — if you’re going to take God entirely out of the picture — then you can unify people through materialism.

Get people in debt, use your credit cards, folks. Buy stuff. Acquire stuff. And then you can rent storage facilities to keep the stuff you bought that you don’t need.

But that way, we’re all in this together and we can all talk about the great commercials we saw during the football game. And we’re all in this great materialistic splurge because it will unite people.

Materialism that flows from the denial of God:

And what any tyrant knows is that you cannot enslave a people that believe in the Boss. You just can’t. And so, therefore, any tyranny will always begin to develop a hostility to traditional biblical faith, a hostility to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a hostility to biblical commitment of any kind at all.

You always find that, whether it’s Cuba or the Soviet Union or anywhere else, secularism becomes the religion of the day. In fact, I gave it a name — secular fundamentalism, I think, is the religion of the day.

Now, it usually doesn’t begin with religious belief and God-centric thought and then get replaced by atheism. There is, rather, very often a process by which religion is eroded away until it can be overthrown altogether and replaced. And so atheistic Marxism was itself officially repackaged into a pseudo-Christian heresy called “liberation theology” that Barack Obama bought from his pastor for 23 years. I described this movement and its relationship to communism in my very first article:

But even allowing that Obama somehow never heard – and even more amazingly, never heard of – anything offensive ever coming from the mouth of his pastor, anyone even remotely familiar with Jeremiah Wright, Jr. and the Trinity United Church of Christ knows full well that both the pastor and the church are leading proponents of an extremely radical ideology known as “black liberation theology.” In short, liberation theology is a giant nut of Marxism covered with a candy coating of Jesus. Liberation theology is a reading of Christianity through Marxist eyes, and very pointedly NOT vice versa. Rather than forgiving its enemies, its adherents all over the world have routinely claimed that oppressors should be overthrown by violent means.

Liberation theology was developed in the early 1970s to pave the way for the communist Sandinistas to infiltrate – and subsequently dominate – Nicaraguan society. The Sandinistas understood full well that they had no hope of installing a Marxist regime in a country that was well over 90% Roman Catholic unless they could successfully subsume Catholicism into their cause of Marxism. And the wedding of Marxism with Christianity was brought about in a clear effort of the former to crush the latter.

Marxism – atheistic though it is – has frequently been characterized as a Christian heresy, in which a glorious new age utopia (a Marxist perversion of heaven) is to be ushered in by a transformation of human nature in a grand historical dialectic. In traditional Christianity, the ennobling of human nature takes place because of the creation of man in the image of God and because of the divine Christ’s Incarnation; in Marxism, the State assumes God’s place. Marxism offers rival theories of sin (private property) and salvation (collective ownership), a church that dispenses grace (the State), and a litany of saints (the proletariat and their Marxist leadership) and sinners (the bourgeoise and their capitalists enablers). In actual historical practice, in every single case, Marxism in a single century has led to more human slaughter and more degradation than all the religions of the world combined led to throughout all of human history.

Thus we see that it is not too much of a stretch for Christian heretics to embrace Marxism as a creed, since, as G.K. Chesterton pointed out, heresy is often truth gone mad. Liberation theology is the subsumption of one tiny truth (that God cares about the poor) wrapped by so much error that it resulted in a form of insanity that saw “Christians” embrace what clearly amounted to terrorism against governments and the very poor and innocent that they claimed to champion.

Liberalism as a movement has LONG realized what hard-core Marxism understood through “liberation theology” in the 1970s. Namely, that you could “Christianize” socialism by taking that little kernel of truth – that God cares for the poor – and then exploiting that to build a gigantic totalitarian nanny state that is itself a massive lie out of that tiny kernel of truth.

Don’t tell me that liberalism isn’t a close relative of Marxism that is only waiting to be given enough power to become exactly LIKE Marxism. Karl Marx provided a key statement about economic Marxism when he said:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

What we have here is the grounds for a State to seize wealth from those who produce and redistribute it to those who do not.

And I defy any liberal to explain how ideological liberalism repudiates and denounces this central premise of Marxism.

I have more to say about liberalism and how it has perverted the essence of Jesus and Christianity, and will do so in an article I have yet to write titled, “Why Do Depraved Democrats Deceitfully Distort Jesus To Demagogue Republicans???”